Use of the alternate regulator

Donation or self rescue -- which have you done more often?

  • I've needed a reg for someone else more often than for myself; I use a standard rig.

    Votes: 12 9.4%
  • I've needed a reg for someone else more often than for myself; I dive a bungied backup.

    Votes: 21 16.5%
  • I've needed a reg for self-rescue more than donation; standard rig

    Votes: 6 4.7%
  • I've needed a reg for self-rescue more than donation; bungied backup

    Votes: 14 11.0%
  • I have never needed to use a backup reg for anybody.

    Votes: 74 58.3%

  • Total voters
    127

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I voted self rescue/Bungied B/U but I would rather say self use as I've really never had to "rescue" myself.

One of my pet peeves is the way many divers treat their alternates. They (may) breath their primary during a buddy check but just tap the purge if anything on the alt. No idea how it feels to breath. I posted this link in another thread but here's why I like the bungied B/U:

[video=youtube;BKKpuHxGENY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKKpuHxGENY&list=UU5zvhnU0XYpf_cadpYJYkhQ& index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
 
I recently submerged during a night dive and did something stupid. I didn't actually have a regulator in my mouth and I didn't realize until I was a few feet down and went to took a breath to get nothing!

I grabbed my bungie'd second and placed it in my mouth because it was the closest reg to my mouth and my hand found it first. A minute later or so I switched to my long hose.

I've heard of stories of people's cover coming off and the diaphram falling out. I've heard stories of mouthpieces coming off. I've also messed up and got a bunch of mud in the reg after leaving it sit in the shoreline. There are scenarios where the 2nd can fail but the other is just fine. Switch to the alternate and if that doesn't work signal OOA to your buddy. If the alternate works, examine the primary to see if you can resolve the problem or not.
 
I voted this option: I've needed a reg for someone else more often than for myself; I dive a bungied backup.

That said, right now I only have that config when diving doubles. My single tank setup doesn't have a bungied backup (yet). I was glad that I had decided to dive in doubles that day because the long hose made this a lot easier and allowed us to make a nice slow ascent. He wasn't completely OOG, but the needle on his gauge showed he was at most a few breaths from it.
 
I've never needed to deploy my backup regulator. I'm not counting the times my idiot ex-husband purposely ran completely OOA and used my octo as his second gas source. That was his dive plan, not mine. My dive plan was to try to stay far enough away from him that he was forced to surface when he went OOA. Those days are gone and were not in my control, literally.
I have needed to do a regulator recovery a couple of times when I've done the ditzy blonde mistake of jumping into the surf without my regulator in my mouth. Not very smart, especially when the waves are high and you're new to shore diving. Luckily, recovery has never seemed to be a difficult exercise to me. I can sweep with my arm or track it from the first stage quite easily.
I'm just now setting up my entire kit hogarthian style with the octo bungeed under my chin, long hose primary, short HP hose for the SPG. Just got the harness/wing and BP. Haven't even dived in the pool with it, as I needed to buy a couple of little things that I wanted to thread onto the harness as I set it up.
 
So, if I dive a "standard" rig sometimes, and a bungied backup sometime, and that's with either a 27" primary/40" second or a 7' primary/27" second, and an integrated power inflator/second sometimes... and have donated regs from all these configurations over the years, but haven't kept track of how many from which one... how shall I provide a meaningful answer to this poll???
:)
Rick
(and now that I think about it... where does buddy-breathing on a single hose setup fit in?)
 
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I've popped my backup reg in my mouth a few times, but I'd never call it a 'self rescue'. It was just convinient at the time. A particularly funny time was on a dive where I cached a stage bottle in the middle of a series of 3 sneezes (I sometimes just have to sneeze while underwater, its weird) while surveying in a cave. Rather than fumble with my long hose mid-sneeze, I just went to my backup :) Didn't miss a beat.
 
Your backup second stage is for whatever you need to use it for, including breathing while you clean the puke out of your primary.

However, if your primary fails, and you have to use the secondary, the dive should be aborted because your buddy no longer has an alternate air source. I think this should also go for a primary that you can't get to stop taking on water as well.

After having my primary ripped out my mouth in an smb practice, I decided to bungee my backup so it would be more convenient for both my buddy, and for me.
 
qualifier: outside of practicing (not real) or giving lessons (unusual context)

of the times it's been really urgent:

- twice using my own alternate because my primary failed in some way.
- once buddy breathing from my buddy's reg because both his and my alternates were floating who-knows-where (in the old days before we had this whole how-to-attach-the-octopus-so-you-know-where-it-is thing worked out). In this case I would have used his alternate if I had seen it

other times:

- several times using my own alternate in order to inspect the main. most often this has happened when for whatever reason the main has a slow leak, which drives me bonkers. For example, the odd time it's happened in the winter when it started to freeze open a bit.
- several times using my buddy's long-hose (or visa versa) on long shallow dives when one of us started with a short-fill so we could equalize the pressures.

R..
 
I always go to my octo as I dive Hogarthian, but I have used my octo for a couple sanity breaths before continuing a dive but have luckily never had to donate my long hose outside of training.
 

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